Holiday Hills Golf Course - Branson, MO

So, after thinking for a while, I'm trying to decide what all I really want to write about on this blog. One of my favorite things to do is play golf, so I'm going to share a little about my golf experiences and the different courses I get to play. 

Today, I played Holiday Hills Golf Course in Branson. We tried going out yesterday, but after four hole we had to postpone it until today. I was hoping we'd get to finish yesterday so we could play Thousand Hills today (we're staying right on that course). 

This was one of the shortest courses I've ever played. I was with my uncles and my cousin Kellie, and today was her first golf outing, so we played from the white tees (the second shortest out of four). The longest are the golds, then blue, white and red. From the white tees, the course played just under 4800 yards, and is a par 68 with five par three's and one par five. This is also the only course I've ever seen that has back-to-back par three's. This course does that twice, with the 130 yard #6 followed by the 110 yard #7, and the gorgeous downhill 118 yard #16 and the 140 yard #17. After four holes, we decided to team up into a 2-man scramble to speed up the round due to a lot of people out on the course. 

Holiday Hills is a pretty nice course. It's challenging, but not punishing. On most of the holes, hitting in the rough can lead to a very manageable next shot. The course has some beautiful settings, especially with the hills and the creek that winds through the holes. The carts have GPS screens in them and tell you exactly how far you are from the front and back of each bunker, water hazard, and also the dimensions of the green and the distance to the pin, no matter where you are on the hole (or surrounding holes). My favorite holes were three of the par three's (2, 6, and 16). Most of the 4's were all pretty similar.

Some highlights of the course, and my round:

Hole 2 - I hit a sand wedge over the water to within 10 feet, then tapped in for birdie on this 86 yarder.

Hole 6 - I skied a 7 iron up over the water and left the biggest divot of my life on the lower tier of the green. The greens took on a lot of water from last night's storm and then a short steady rain shower today, so big divots were common.

Hole 9 - The only par 5, it played about 465 today. We took Larry's drive (mine went hopelessly right into some guy's front yard), which was about 160 yards. I hit a 5 wood about 200 yards that bounced just into the rough on the right side, then nailed a pitching wedge straight up over a tree and onto the green. We then four putted for a fantastic 7.

Hole 13 - Played 369 today, and I finally crushed a drive that played perfectly left-to-right into the fairway right at 100 yards short of the pin.

Hole 14 - My drive sliced into the very start of the #15 fairway, which came up 135 short of the pin, but about 35 feet uphill. I hit a 7-iron pin high just to the fringe.

I'm hoping to hit Peoria Ridge sometime this next week. I played Miami Golf & Country Club a couple weeks ago, I'll try to post on it sometime in the next couple days. Hopefully I'll be able to hit a few more courses this summer.